


Edelweiss, Edelweiss

by Roverlord



Series: MCU Mirror Universe [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Asexuality, Bisexuality, Changing POV, Character Death, Evil Steve Rogers, Mirror Universe, Other foul language, Period-Typical Racism, Racist Language, Set in nazi germany, Slurs, Swearing, Twisted idealism, Villain Steve Rogers, dark shit
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-04
Updated: 2019-06-21
Packaged: 2019-09-22 10:21:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17057987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roverlord/pseuds/Roverlord
Summary: "Edelweiss, EdelweissBless my homeland always"~ 'Edelweiss' by Richard Rodgers----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------It was 1940's, in Germany.There was no organized resistance to nazism, but many inviduals acted on their own, with different goals and personal ideals, with different methods and degrees of success.Johann Schmidt had enough problems already, but he had to do something too, so he fought. For the people and Germany itself. One could say it was his worst mistake, but he doesn't regret a thing.Okay, maybe one.





	1. Abraham Erskine

**Dresden, Germany**

**September 1940**

 

Icy wind slashed at his face and the rain danced its evil dance upon his head as he, cold and wet, tired and exhausted, made his way along the path through the forest. He could hear Gestapo's dogs behind him, getting closer and closer.

Erskine looked over his shoulder and tripped on oak roots, falling face-first into mud. A crack of thunder lighted the sky, and his pursuers saw him. He saw them too, no more than one hundred and fifty meters away. They opened fire and Erskine ducked behind the tree, looking at his surroundings. He was in the middle a forest clearing, there was nothing else to take cover behind. No way out. He couldn't even burn his notes in the rain and wind. He squeezed his eyes shut and hoped for a quick death. The sounds came closer, and then there was more gunshots and shouting. An exchange of shots? Erskine carefully turned around looked, but it was dark again and he couldn't see anything. He heard a scream and a couple more shots, then it became completely silent, except for an ocassional roar of thunder from far away.

He still didn't dare to move and briefly considered eating his notes to get rid of them, but his research was too important. After a few minutes or maybe just seconds he was about to go on running, when another crack of lighting revealed a cloaked man standing only meters away from Erskine. Paralyzed with fear, he pressed his back against the tree and stared at him.

The man in a dark coat and cloak was covered with blood splatters, the blood soaking and dripping from his gloves. He didn't look like a Gestapo agent and probably was the one who intervened, but why? Who was he? What did he want from Erskine? What did the silver octopus badge mean? The man walked closer and extended a blood-covered hand, which Erskine hesitantly took. The man helped him stand up, leading him back into the dark forest.

"Who are you?" Erskine dared to ask, uselessly trying to get a glimpse of the man's hooded face.

"It depends" the man told him "are you doktor Abraham Erskine?"

"Yes" What did he want? "Yes i am?"

When they neared civilization, the man handed Erskine his overcoat and told him to cover up the jew star. While Erskine did, the man took the cloak off. Erskine didn't know what had he been expecting, but the man looked rather normal. There was nothing extraordinary about his features and, in civilian clothes, he would effortlessly blend in anywhere.

"I am Schmidt. Johann Schmidt" Johann finally introduced himself. Was it an alias or was it really his name? The most common name in German-speaking world, Erskine had heard. The perfect name to use to blend in, but just as likely as an actual birth name.

"Why did you help me back there? What do you want from me?" As long as Erskine had remembered, people only came to him when they wanted something. This _Herr_ Schmidt was probably no exception. It was midnight and the streets were empty, they had to hurry before they got spotted.

"Why would i have not? I have also heard about your research, _doktor_. Quite fascinating" Of course, he could smell it. Everybody wanted his formula "and we cannot let it fall to nazi hands" at least Johann was right about something. Erskine almost wanted to tell the man there was no "we", but his life was currently on the line, he could not afford to make Johann angry.

They reached what Erskine presumed to be Johann's house, the man seemed to be rather well-off and important which made Erskine worry a little about what was going to become of him. He followed Johann into the living room where he covered the view from outside with curtains and lit the fireplace, inviting Erskine to sit down. When Johann went off for something, Erskine looked around.

There were two umbrellas on the rack, a gramophone with several disks stacked next to it, the walls around him held photographs and paintings, of countryside, Edelweiss flowers, and the battles of ancient gods. The photographs were far less in numbers, mostly presenting people Erskine didn't think he had ever met. One of them appeared to be a family photo, with five people in it. The tallest one was blocky-faced and dark-haired, an iron cross on his collar. Next to him was slightly shorter man, similiar enough to be his brother, who was either very light blonde or an albino, with a haunted look in his eyes. In front of them stood a probably married couple, a possibly red-haired man with glasses and a bad case of cowlick, wearing an Austrian military uniform of a high rank, and a blonde woman in an expensive purple dress. Between the couple and the brothers stood a boy about fifteen or sixteen, probably Johann, as the boy resembked him and it was unlikely he'd keep somebody else's family photos around.

Erskine put the photo back on the shelf when he heard Johann returning. He carried a pot of lukewarm coffee and a small plate with fish and potatoes on it. Erskine thanked him and carefully took a bite of the food and waited a moment to see if it had any ill effects, which it didn't, and wolfed down the rest, he hadn't eaten in weeks. Johann waited for him to finish before speaking.

"I have connections. I can get you to France, then you will be on your own" Erskine nodded "When you find the resistance, they will help you cross the channel"

"Why are you helping me?"

"Why would i not? You, your people, and all the others have done no wrong. You are people just like everybody else and deserve to be treated as such. Of course i help you. Neutrality in the face of evil is evil in itself!"

Erskine had been going to presume Johann only felt sympathy because his albino relative was one of the people in danger, but, honestly, he thinks he might've forgotten there were still good people in the world. Erskine, on the other hand... If Johann knew him, he wouldn't call him a good person. Erskine had gained quite a reputation in the underworld before The Great War and they still knew him by the name. Though an upper-class man like Johann had presumably little to do with the underworld. He, on the other hand, also went around cloaked at night hunting nazis, so who knows where he has been.

Erskine watched Johann to wipe the blood off his knife and clothes, tuck the knife into hiding, and put his coat on the rack, pocketing the octopus symbol.

"What's the meaning of the octopus?" He asked, kind of curious.

"I am not the only one. There are about sixty or seventy of us in Germany and all around the occupied territories. The octopus' tentacles refer to how we are numerous and we can reach almost everywhere"

"Why don't you stage a coup, then?"

"The lack of resources. And the lack of guts; many of us just spy and harbor refugees. We don't have guns or other resources, and most of my men are afraid to partake in an outright battle" Erskine nodded, made sense. Johann stood up and told him to follow, taking him into the attic and a secret door behind which there was a small, dark space with old blankets and pillows that seemed recently used. Johann told him there was a sharp shovel in the corner, not that it would help if Gestapo stormed the room, but it was better than nothing.

* * *

Erskine didn't know how long he had either slept or lied in the darkness, but he woke up to voices in the room under. He crawled over to a small crack in the floor and peeked into the living room. Johann was sitting there, discussing with two **nazi officers** , whom he called Siegfried and Max. The two men were the ones from the family picture, Erskine recognized. The dark-haired and the red-haired one. They discussed something called "Hydra". When Siegfried moved a little, Erskine could see him and the other man wearing the octopus badges too.

Erskine listened carefully. They talked about people named Arnim, Heinz, and Luciano, and secret tunnels under the old fences in German-Polish and German-French borders. Luciano's and some Baldini's resistance movement in Italy had lost half it's men taking over a townt anda one of the octopus badges, named Julia, had been captured and hanged, and the others were scared. Erskine, among other things, learned that this Heinz would take him to France and a french resistace fighter Louis would be waiting for him. He was mildly worried because these officers knew he was somewhere on Johann's property, but the men went on their own ways after the meeting was over.

Johann later brought him food, and explained everything to him. He would go tomorrow night. Erskine thanked him because he was polite like that, and told him about this formula of his. It would make the taker stronger, faster, and more durable than normal and possibly unable to get sick or old or even die unless the taker's body was damaged beyond repair. Johann, who had seemed pretty desperate to Erskine, looked intrigued, which had been his aim. He couldn't present the Allied leaders with a defective serum. It had had it's problems, but he had fixed them. He hadn't tested the result yet though, but Schmidt wouldn't need to know that. If it worked, he would never know, but if it didn't, he'd be too dead to care. Regrettable, but necessary to achieve a greater good.

"It is ready and tested, and i have the written formula down. It would, however, be better if we got rid of the sample. You're a good man and you're doing the right thing the best you can. What do you say?"

"I...agree" Johann answered after a moment of silence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Siegfried, Max, and Luciano are my names for Ludwig, Roderich Edelstein, and Feliciano Vargas from Hetalia fandom's popular 2P (Mirrorverse) AU. You don't need to know anything about that, they just exist in the background.
> 
> Baldini is an Italian villain from 60's, one of Red Skull's Exiles. He used his scarf as a weapon.


	2. Arnim Zola

It was a bright, cold morning. Arnim Zola walked down the street towards Johann's house. He had heard a word about something seriously bad happening, and he had to go see Johann, even if regularly traveling between Berlin and München to meet another man and neglecting his work was suspicious and dangerous. The door was locked, of course, and Arnim started picking it. It was a very good lock, but it eventually broke with the aid of a stone, and in he stepped, closing the door and securing it shut with a broom he found lying outside next to it.

His eyes adjusted to the lack of lighting, Arnim continued walking towards the direction he remebered the bedroom to be in. The other rooms at Arnim could see all were completely normal, but in the kitchen the table had been shoved aside and two chairs were down, the one in the middle of the room broken. There were clawing marks on the rug, chair, and tablecloth, a flower pot was in tiny pieces, Edelweiss flowers lied crushed under the shards, and things had been knocked down from the shelves and tables in the chair's immediate vicinity.

There was also a scary amount of blood on the floor around the chair and the stuff that had been clawed. A handprint on the table. There also was hair on the ground, but the blood was obviously more alarming. He had to find Johann, because something very bad had obviously happened. But what? Had he been taken by Gestapo? The chaos in the room didn't look like the aftermath of a fight, but like something a maddened creature from a horror story would leave in it's wake. He followed the bloodrops all around the house before finally coming to what must've been the bedroom, as this was the last door to be opened. He carefully turned the handle and slowly pushed open the door. 

The trail of blood led to Johann laying in shadow and silence under his blanket, his body visibly still shaking and breath still unsteady. The sound of breathing stopped when the floor under Arnim's feet creaked loudly upon his weight. After a moment of silence, he called Johann's name, letting him know it was him, and continued walking towards the bed.

"Go away" came a pained, coarse whisper " _please._ " Arnim could see blooddrops on the sheets and under the nails of Johann's hand that could be seen from between the blankets, hanging weakly over the edge of the bed.

"Why?" Arnim asked, getting more and more worried and kind of scared too. "Just go!" Arnim ignored Johann's words and yanked the blanket off him. Startled, he dropped the blanked on the floor and almost screamed, while Johann tried to cover his still bleeding head with a pillow, telling him to go away. Arnim desperately tried to scrape himself back together to the best of his ability. After seconds of silence, he approached Johann carefully, wary of his possible reactions.

"Johann... Johann what happened?!" Arnim tried to lock eyes with Johann, who in turn desperately tried to hide his mutilated face. Arnim let the pillow be and knelt down next to the bed, on Johann's current eye level. Johann looked at Arnim for a moment and let him take the pillow off. The scarring was even worse than it had looked like at the first glance, he looked like a bright red  _Totenkopf_  skull. Arnim asked again what had happened, this time getting an answer. Johann clearly was still in a shock, so the briefness and vagueness of the answers was understandable.

"Erskine. The serum.."

"What?" Arnim asked in confusion, not knowing about anything really, because nobody had ever told him. His interpration of the sentence was that whatever the Hell had happened, it was this Erskine's fault. "What serum?" Johann hesitated to aswer so long Arnim thought he wasn't going to, but then started speaking.

"I... Arnim..... You know that i'm stupid. I'm an idiot. I try my best at everything, but it's never enough. I'm too weak." He was propably talking about the people he couldn't save. The last one was a week ago, the man had drowned in the river because Johann's strenght had left him at the worst possible moment.

"I endanger both of us all the time, i have a vision but not the bite to back my bark, and people i try to help die because i can't do my best at everything." Johann continued, crying a little, which looked gross now that he seemingly lacked eyelids, "Like that boy at Elbe. He died because i couldn't reach him in time. And...."

"... And?" Arnim asked expectantly, wanting to hear about Erskine and The Serum.

"This one guy, Erskine, who i saved from Gestapo agents two days ago... He said he could help me. He could make me stronger. He said i could be invincible. I... This sounds bad, but i thought i **deserved** that power. I needed it. Erskine said the formula was tested and ready, but he wanted to get rid of the sample in case he was captured again. He offered it to me as a sign of gratitude. I should've been suspicious and declined, but he had his way with words. He convinced me to accept."

Johann rose to a sitting position, head hunched low. "You see, we all know that The Gods don't care and we have to take action ourselves. The Gods are not so different from us, they just live longer and have extraordinary abilities. I thought... _Gott_ , this is going to sound even worse... That if i gained power equal to that of a god, i could..... I could..." He started trailing off, while Arnim processed the information.

Johann had always had some kind of a complex, but it had never caused harm to Johann himself or anybody around him, so everybody had left it be. Did Johann have some kind of delusions of divinity? He had never been narcistic or anything...

 "Can you tell me what happened?" Arnim asked, still recovering from his own shock. Johann started descriping Erskine's explanations in more detail. This Erskine had lied to his savior's face, probably on purpose. Johann explained how, after Erskine's departure, he had pulled a chair from the table, tied a string around his arm to better see his veins, and injected himself with this serum.

_For a moment Johann had only felt the string. Then his whole body had suddenly been consumed with horrible pain and felt like it was on fire. He had fallen from the chair. His memories of the next moments were rather blurry, which was probably a good thing, but he remembered the psychedelic, horrifying hallucinations and strange sensations all over his body. His face had felt like as if there had been thousands of bugs crawling all over him, and he had started to compulsively scratch off his own flesh, which had seemed to grow back over and over again, until his strenght had left him and he had collapsed._

_Soon after regaining his senses, Johann had lost his consciousness, and fallen back to the ground. Waking up, he had seen his scars in the mirror and reached accordingly. He had crawled into hiding and hoped no one would ever find him._

"It will be okay, _Hansel_...." Arnim lied, because he, understandably and obviously, had no idea about how to make this okay. A face that had been clawed off was clawed off and would stay that way. But his first priority was to calm Johann down, then they would think about what to do, as Johann obviously couldn't go anywhere looking like that, the other side-effects were unknown and would need to be treated and documented, and it was entirely possible some kind of infection had gotten into Johann's blood from the still open wounds and they would have to monitor that too.

"Don't you lie to a dying man." Arnim heard Johann mutter half-unconsciously, and turned his head.

"You are not going to die, Johann. You survived. We just have to find a way to deal with the problem."

"Am i not?" Johann looked at the ceiling "Why do i feel dead, then?" If you didn't count the scratched face and the new muscles, he looked excatly the same as before. Except for, it seems, also the eyes. Johann's eyes had gone from the natural blue and white to rather bright red and yellow, for no apparent reason. That would be harder to cover up. Arnim sat on the bed next to Johann and looked at him, trying his best to not look disturbed or scared, this was hard enough to Johann already.

Johann always worried and panicked over smallest and most insignificant things, but this truly was something they should panic about. He thought of petting Johann a bit to calm him down, but it could be the best to not touch him at all for now.

Johann lied back on his side, descriping the random feelings and details about what excatly had he experienced in the moments after injection. Arnim listened and documented, because that was all he could do for him. Arnim reminded Johann of his straight-up uncanny disguising skills, maybe those could help them. Johann had always only used his skills to change details, never to actually make a mask, he had never even tried, but his abilities were far beyond anything that should be possible with modern day technology or anything else, and nobody, including Arnim, hadn't ever seen him do it, did not even know how _did_ he do it, so it was hard to guess what would be actually possible and what would not. There was a reason why the nazis referred to codenameless Johann as  _Der Aufhocker_ , which was an unkillable, mythological shapeshifter.

Arnim thought of not telling Johann why had he come to München, but Johann, almost as if reading his thoughts, asked him. He explained Johann that his "mad ramblings", as Arnim had always called them, about The Gods, could be at least partially true. The nazis were tracking a blue cube called The Tesseract and associated with ancient Germanic/Norse mythology, with the lead of an officer named Howard Stark. Johann and Arnim had both heard of him, he was rather infamous.

Also, some members of The White Rose had been captured and executed. Among them, according to the papers, Esther Goldberg, from München. She had been Johann's friend when he was a child, but Arnim sometimes felt like it had been something more, which was odd considering Johann was homosexual. When told about Esther's death, Johann cried weirdly much about an old friend he hadn't seen for almost two decades. Then again, Johann had always cared a lot about everybody and everything. Sometimes Arnim was surprised he could fake a loyalty to the nazi party so easily. He would've probably shed a few tears even if he didn't know anybody from The White Rose, if only out of pity. If you ask Arnim, those people were stupid. A  _non-violent_  resistance. Against the  _nazis_.

Johann pulled Arnim closer and cried on his shoulder. Usually Arnim didn't like Johann crying like a baby, he was a grown man for God's sake, but he had a lot of reasons to cry, especially now, so Arnim, like always, didn't say anything about it. Then Johann suddendly just stopped, which was kind of unnerving. So was his calmness as he asked a question.

"Do you know the name of the man who ordered the executions?"

"Yes" Arnim said "Howard Stark."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sigi is short for Siegfried  
> Esther was a girl mentioned in Red Skull's origin story in comics. I made the surname up because it wasn't mentioned.


	3. Steve Rogers

The square had been taken over by an enormous expo. The inventors themselves himself were there, presenting the crowd with the machinery of the future. The audience first gasped in awe, then laughed, when Dr. Jones took off his flying car's tires, the creation floated for a moment and then fell on the ground with a bad-sounding crash. Thank god his army employers weren't there to see the flop.

"It's still in development" He quipped, making the crowd laugh again. He looked at the space beside him and noticed Dr. Erskine was gone yet again. Where to, Jones had no idea, but he was too busy keeping the show going to look for him, he could fend for himself. He didn't really care.

Erskine had heard noises from behind the theatre and went to look for the cause of the commotion. There had been disturbance in the theatre and the ushers had thrown two guys out, one mountain of a man and the other a tiny runt. Apparently the fight had started over the propaganda film at the beginning of a movie.

"Show some respect, or take a powder!" Steve got punched for umpteenth time by the movie-disturber. Steve gave no shits about the war, the United States of A, or their involvement, but he wasn't about to let this guy to disrespect people who had guts to die for something. The guy hit him again, and Steve tried to block but wasn't strong enough to stop the momentum and got knocked into trashcans.

He shakily stood back up, a lid from the can in his hand, and hit the guy in the eyes with it. Bucky always tried to teach him to run, but how could he? He loved the thrill he got from a good fight, even if he had no hope to win. His opponent tore the lid from his hands and bended it in double back. Steve quickly stumbled around the guy to avoid getting cornered, his eyes scanning the crowd for Bucky, finding him too busy with Steve's date to notice him getting beaten up.

Erskine watched how the runt pulled a knife and went for the guy's shins, aiming wrong and almost losing the weapon to him. People stopped by to watch the fight but no one felt the need to intervene. Erskine stood at the corner, observing. The runt was already beaten to pulp and at the verge of an asthma attack, but kept the pain inside him and kept on fighting. Such a high pain tolerance and self-control, he made almost no noise beside the wheezing despite the pain he must've been in.

The runt got punched on the jaw and fell to the ground where he stood, his knees not even having time to wobble. A dark-haired, much more fit man in a sergeant's uniform pushed through the crowd and smashed the big one's head against the brick wall, propably killing him. As the fight was over and the big guy seemed dead, the audience quickly went on their ways to avoid getting involved. The man tried to shake still lying runt awake.

"Steve! Hey, Steve!" Steve didn't wake up, and the guy quickly grew agitated "Get up, you damn runt!" Steve carefully opened his left eye a bit at the yell. To Erskine it looked like they knew each other, but, by the bigger guy's behavior, he didn't really give a shit about this Steve. When Steve started to regain his senses, however, the man's behavior immediately changed. Steve probably had something for that two-face to want from him. Erskine, if someone, knew about that.

When he stuck around to listen them talk, he heard that Steve wanted to join the army, but was too sickly. He had lied, gotten caught, and was in trouble. Erskine's first serum had failed quite horribly because it was far too strong, and the version he had tested on Schmidt had it's side effects, a temporary bout of agony, hallucinations, and madness. With a runt like Steve, the serum growing him too much would not be as dangerous, and restraining him would probably be enough to keep him from mutilating himself.

"Hey, what are you staring at?" The big guy, Bucky had noticed Erskine staring at them, but it hadn't been his intention to hide, he would have approached Steve soon enough anyway, this was a rare chance. He walked over and introduced himself to the two, asking Steve to tell about himself. The guy was a bit suspicious, but didn't think telling Erskine about his long-dead parents would hurt him.

"My father fought in the Great War and was killed in the battle of Bellau wood by mustard gas. Mom worked as a nurse in the hospital and caught tuberculosis three years ago. I want to fight too, not for nation, creed, or glory, i am just worried about the state of the world." Erskine considered the information he had been given, there would be no one to miss Steve. He made the runt the nearly same offer he had made  _Herr_  Schmidt. Steve accepted too. Bucky was not there to voice his dissapproval, Erskine had intentionally got him lost in the crowd before approaching Steve with his offer.

When Steve asked him why had he chosen him, Erskine made something up, about how Steve supposedly was a good man and how there already were many big men fighting the war, how maybe what they needed was the little guy. Steve seemed a little suspicious, finally asking Erskine where was he from and Erskine didn't see any reason to lie, neutrally telling him he was born in Augsburg, Germany. Steve was briefly taken aback, which didn't really surprise him. During and after the Great War, anti-German hysteria had been high, and this war was no different. Americans always hated 'foreigners', despite the hypocrisy of literally everybody there except for the indians being foreigners or a descendants in a long line of foreigners themselves.

Steve let go of it, not really giving a shit. To him, nations were just names and lines on the map. He had just been... Startled to hear this Erskine was German. Maybe he should go out less, the propaganda was getting a hold of him. Not all Germans were nazis, their first victims and the first refugees to America were mostly German too, but everybody seemed to forget that. And everybody hated Germans anyway. All the blame and punishment for the Great War had been lumped on Germany, despite all the inbred rulers being equally guilty and messed-up, and if the treaty had not been as harsh it was and made Germany the Europe's bitch, the nazis wouldn't've gained so much support from the population. So the Allies were technically guilty too, which everybody seemed to so conveniently forget about. Not surprising at all. Everybody always paints their side as the perfect good guys.

Steve was a bit unsure about actually fighting in a war, he had heard all kinds of horror stories from the trenches, and, despite enjoying the rush of a fight, the movie theater or Brooklyn's back alleys were very different from and noticeably less dangerous than the front line. And he really wasn't that eager to die, but he had heard about what was happening in Europe and could not just leave that be. One man more wouldn't mean much, but there really wasn't much more he could do. And he had to get far away from Brooklyn. Right now. And Erskine promises the charges for lying in his forms would be repealed. Steve didn't know how had Erskine found out, but Steve had committed a federal crime. He could get shot. Did he really have a choice? He doesn't see one.

"Splendid! Come here tomorrow at three, we'll send an agent to pick you up" Watching Erskine walk away and dissappear into into the crowd, Steve got a bad feeling about the whole thing in his gut, but ignored it, noted the street corner, and went looking for Bucky. He told him nothing about the experiment, for it was a national secret, but the guy seemed a little suspicious. Well, he wouldn't be there tomorrow.

Maybe neither of them would be in this world in a few days.

* * *

 

At three o'clock Steve stood at the same corner, not really knowing who or what he was waiting for, and the whoever or whatever was already terribly late. A black car pulled up, a driver and an uniformed woman in it. The woman first stared at him in disbelief, then coldly told him to get in and not try anything funny, she was armed to the teeth.

Steve sat on the back seat next to her, nervous that the woman would shoot him anyway, no matter what he did or didn't do. The trip was rather long and scary, and took them to a training camp with about eleven much more physically fit men. Colonel Phillips clearly was going to use Hodge, but the serum was Erskine's, and he wanted Steve. The reasons he kept to himself.

Steve survived the week through sheer guts and cunning, pushing through the pain of his assignments and sabotaging the others to the best of his ability. Being the first to jump on the fake grenade when Phillips threw it in the middle of the group during an excercise. Playing the role of the perfect and inspiring hero while stabbing his boorish comrades in the back wholeheartedly, looking sympathetic in every situation The God threw at him, using his wits to replace what he lacked in strenght. Manipulation, he's had a lifetime of practice.

Erskine eventually got what he wanted, and at the next week's monday, he was woken up and taken back to the city, into an antique shop where an old woman sat behind the counter and opened them a secret door upon hearing Carter, the scary woman from the car, provide the password. The room underground looked like a factory, with computers and mysterious devices all around and a watch room up next to the door they came in from. Carter walked into the observation room and he was directed down the stairs, where he saw an operating table with strong straps for the hands, legs, and neck. Now he really wanted to get the hell out of there, but it a bit was too late now. He had only wanted to enlist to escape the bullies and the murder investigation, but now he was gonna die.

He was pushed to the table and strapped down, and after a penicilin shot a crude metal coffin was placed on him, Erskine talking about some Vita-rays which, known only to Erskine, were merely a distraction from the formula itself. Steve heard machinery whirring and saw series of very, very big needles full of dark blue liquid coming out from his both sides, nearly peeing himself in fright as his vision flashed with a bright white light and all the needles simultaneously sunk into his flesh, making his whole body burn. He opened his eyes and screamed.

When noise faded away, he could hear Erskine, thinking Steve was unconscious, saying he had chosen Steve not for the reasons he had given him, but because they had to find a guinea pig, and nobody would have missed an ailmented adult orphan. Steve's pupils became small as needle tips with rage, as his body trembled with pain and shock as the metal coffin lifted. For once, Steve had thought there was someone in the world besides Bucky who cared at least a little about him, but he had been lied to. The man had wanted him to die.

He heard an explosion, and shot ringing in the power cut-induced darkness. He yanked Erskine in front of him as a human shield, and the star on the floor was dyed red and later black with dried blood.


	4. Howard Stark

**_One Week Later_ **

 

The night of Tønsberg was moonless and dark, the stars hiding from SS-Obergruppenführer Howard Stark behind the clouds. As the platoon had approached the village, the partisans on the guard had seen them approaching and opened fire. They did the best they could but were no match to Stark's elite.

As ambushers fell one by one, the commanding officer calmly sat in his car in the midst of the crossfire, eerie eyes fixed on the church standing on a hill against the dark sky. The surviving partisans retreated, stark ordering a squad to chase and kill them.

The last two partisans ran towards the church, convincing Stark he had been right. The tank got the other one, but one reached his destination and dissappeared inside. The partisan yelled the church keeper's name, the enemy was approaching! The keeper was clearly afraid, but swore to gods the nazis would never find the artifact.

  
At that very second the tank crashed through the church's wall, killing the partisan. The keeper backed down until he felt the wall behind him, watching as the SS troopers marched in, waiting for the commanding officer to arrive. The man soon did, his silhoulette casting a shadow over the room decorated with ancient runes.

The soldiers saluted Stark as he passed by, but he did not return the gesture, leaving them hang their arms up in the air until they would come down on their own. He called for Arnim Zola who had been commanded to Norway with him by General Edelstein, the swiss stepping out of the car and walking to him, carrying the containment capsule for the artifact.

  
Stark had inspected the wall decorations, depicting the ancient pagan gods and their world tree, Yggrassil. The church's keeper refused disclose the artifact's location, even when Stark threatened to slaughter the town. The man didn't care. That kind of a man Stark  _admired_ , such a cold devotion, but he had his mission, just like the keeper had his. To prove himself a man of his word, Stark ordered the tank crew to open fire.

  
Soon there was nothing left. When Stark threatened the keeper's own life, the man, a coward at heart like everybody else, told there was a secret box in the roots of Ygrassil. Stark thanked him and casually pulled the trigger, then retrieved the artifact. When Stark opened the box, the room was bathed in cold blue light.

Stark laughed madly, it was real. The Tesseract, the jewel of Odin's treasure room, was real. He was holding the light of gods on the palm of his hand! Gruning, Zola, and his soldiers all looked at him as if he was mad.

What was madness? Delusion. Howard Stark held no delusions!

 

They descended from the hill down to the village for the rest of the night, Stark needed rest to stay sharp and nobody could complain about not having to march through the night.

The word reached Stark that he and the agents had to take a retour, as an important bridge had been blown up. Some thoght it was The Allied partisans, but Stark knew, _knew_ , it was the ghost story spoken around München. The Man with A Red Skull For A Head. Red Skull for short. A kind of a folk hero. Kind of, most people were scared to death of him, but it surely was a gruesome sight. He fought the nazi party though, which was all that mattered to a large amount of the folk.

The high command believed him a legend, and Stark hadn't seen the man with his own eyes, but he _knew_ it was real. It didn't require a particular use of intelligence to figure out a connection with Erskine's earlier attempts with his formula. How had Red Skull survived and where he had been hiding, that was the question.

* * *

 As Stark walked into a base near Berlin for a refuel for their cars and a discussion with Eric Koenig, he could swear he heard something that wasn't supposed to be there. He discreetly glanced behind his shoulder, he saw a glimpse of Zola, the tiny man scrambling behind the corner for cover. Stark continued walking, having plans for the Swissman.

When Stark and Koenig met, they didn't bother to salute each other, which surprised Arnim. Stark didn't care about Zola or nazis, he and koenig were brothers in their vision. Hitler and the company could go to hell for all the two cared, they had their own agenda that didn't include any of them. They always hailed victory instead of Hitler unless they thought it would make them suspicious.

Stark looked around the almost bare room, his eyes picking up an old gramophone with several vinyl disks next to it. Mostly funeral music, which was peculiar, and would've creeped out a normal person. Stark didn't care, what he found fascinating most people would find terrifying. Like The Red Skull. Stark was a man of science, but he knew the laws of nature transcended the laws of men. With The Tesseract, he could transcend the laws of nature. Directly speaking, Stark would become a god. Even The Serum alone could work miracles. Miracles he and Koenig would need to dispose of Hitler and the company. Then Germany would be theirs to rule. Erskine was dead, but his work was coursing through the veins of Rogers and Red Skull. That was Stark's answer.

Red Skull, Stark and Koenig all knew the ramble about "Aryans" was pulled out of an horse's anus. But, you see, Stark thinks, to keep an entire nation worshipping you and your ideals, you needed a common enemy to destroy and claim they were out to destroy you. Otherwise any empire would fall and fade away, just like Ancient Rome and The Holy Roman Empire. It meant that even after Stark's last war to end all wars, he had to have a target to sic the citizens against. Sad, but true. The nazis had already made up a conspiracy theory, and it would be the easiest to cling onto it. Stark didn't like the idea of killing even more innocent millions, but if that was the price of order and stability...

Stark lifted the containment capsule ont the desk, stoppig to warn Koenig not to touch the artifact, and opened it, bathing the room in cold blue light. Koenig's eyes grew wide as he looked at the cube, the sight of which almost rendered him speechless.

"It's real..."

"Of course, _mein freund_. I told you. I believe the energies contained inside can be used to power my weapon designs and change our world forever."

"Sieg heil" Eric said quietly, still fascinated by the blue, misty storm in the depths of the cube.

"Sieg heil." Stark answered, already hatching a plan in his mind.


	5. Peggy Carter

Rogers was booed out of the stage, the audience of ragged soldiers throwing shit at him and demanding the dance girls back, but Rogers didn't seem to care that much. He didn't even want to be there, he was just happy that he didn't have to fight and die for anything.

Peggy Carter didn't want to die either. That's why she shot Erskine and tried to shoot Rogers too instead of letting America have The Serum. America couldn't be trusted with something like that, it would result in a superhuman arms rage, and could destroy the whole world. There would be casualties, especially in Europe. That would endanger Peggy herself and her sister, and The Allies were ln the win anyway. Stark had promised to share the completed formula with Peggy and Sharon and "uplift" all three of them, but Peggy had never trusted him, and now that she had read Erskine's notes, she would  **not**  take it, and neither would Sharon. It could still be a good idea to keep her end of the deal and give it to Stark. The man was slightly insane, but unlike USA government, he didn't aim to destroy the rest of the world, he had almost good intentions.

She snapped to reality and attention when Phillips walked past her, towards Rogers, who sloppily saluted, still having not learned to do it without his elbow poking out weirdly. Peggy slowly walked closer to listen the men's discussion. It was about Stark, whose name was not familiar to Rogers.

Howard Stark, born in America to German immigrants, the head of a nazi deep science division. He had joined the nazis as soon as they rose to power, but didn't appear to share all their ideals. Peggy knew the details, Stark thought there was no natural "master race" and wanted to create one himself, make himself one, and then make make world a totalitsarian dictartorship because he thought it'd stop tragedies like The Great War and bring world peace. Of course, Phillips worded it differently to make Stark sound worse than he really was. Stark didn't even seem to specifically hate the other ethnicies and had even taken Erskine, a jewish man, under his protection, though it probably was mostly, or even only, for his formula, and was consumed by murderous fury at his escape. Everybody wanted the formula. Everybody wanted to rule the world.

Peggy's head perked up, when she heard Phillips wanted Rogers to go through the enemy lines and into Austria, as a large number of soldiers had been captured there, and Phillips had a reason for a strong suspicion that Erskine's killer had taken the last surviving vial of The Serum there to be used in human experiments. Their time was valuable, and Phillips could not launch a direct attack yet. If Rogers went there alone with a rifle and prop shield, Phillips would have a plausible deniability in case problems would ensue, like if Rogers got all of them killed.

Rogers didn't want to go on a lone march through the enemy nation and face off against an entire army with a piece of metal, but Phillips ordered him again, telling him that his dear friend James Barnes was either dead or a human guinea pig that could die horribly at any moment. Rogers changed his mind. Peggy offered to go, but Phillips told her to fuck off. She didn't listen, after all, she had to deliver Stark The Serum. There was no stolen vial, all of them had been been shattered. The last sample of The Serum in the world was coursing through Steve's veins now.

* * *

 

She left the camp under the cover of night and reached Rogers when the man had walked beyond the hearing distance from the camp and was starting his motorbike.

"Rogers!"

The man whipped around, startled.

"Didn't Phillips tell you to leave the fighting for men?" Rogers asked. It didn't sound like a sexist comment or a dismission, but more like plain curiosity about why would she go against orders despite her rank already hanging over the edge.

"I am an intelligence officer. I have information. Do you speak German? No? I do. I know a few people around the alps. I know some secret codes they don't know we have cracked yet. I have all the fake paperwork ready for both of us" Peggy added, brandishing what looked like file binder.

The cooperation was agreed on.

* * *

The journey was long, and they saw a lot of things neither of them had wanted to see. Rogers hadn't even known what to expect. Peggy tried to convince herself it was nothing and Stark would end all their suffering after getting The Serum and his "godly" Tesseract weapons, but she wasn't stupid enough to actually believe any of that. She knew Stark wouod need a target to keep the citizen under his banner. Nobody would save those people.

Doesn't matter. Not as long as Sharon, and Peggy herself, would survive.

Rogers was shaken to the core, not understanding how could anybody treat another human being like that, slaughter them like some animals. Peggy didn't believe her explanation would sit well with Steve, or anyone who wasn't a nazi or Stark's ally, for that matter.

"Maybe Stark is kind of right" Rogers says, mostly to himself, at some point "Maybe the world would be at peace if there existed no racial or national distinctions, to cause things like this..." Peggy raised her head in mild shock.

"Do you want to kill everybody too??" She asked for the sake of her cover.

"Not like this."

Peggy wasn't sure what to make of that, so she thought it best to not say anything.

They eventually arrived at the laboratory/factory and took up arms. After hiding the bike, they silently changed clothes and checked their fake papers to make sure they would remember "their" names.

"You are Major Hochstetter" Peggy reminded Rogers with a whisper just in case "and my name is _Frau_ Cliffgarde". Steve nodded, and they walked to the doors, where the guards stepped in front of them to check their papers. They went pale as bedsheets, because Steve's papers said he was Gestapo. Despite the fact that he misprounounced his "own" name while identifying himself.

"Not  _'Hochsetter'_ , Rogers,  _'Hochs **t** etter'_" She whispered when out of earshot, and Rogers gave another solemn nod. He still didn't know very much German, and it wasn't like Peggy, a woman, could do the talking. Not with the Nazis. But when people thought you were Gestapo, just incoherently screaming in their faces would usually do.

They speedwalked down the hallways and found a locked room with two guards, who Steve gestured to step away. In the room, there was a big, dark-haired man strapped to the table half-naked and reciting his name, rank and number to an empty room, looking like he had been tortured. Steve recognized him after a moment. It was Bucky!

After dashing into the room, Steve noticed there was another man in there, chained to the bars of the window by his wrists. He was short and round and had displaced, broken glasses. His eyes were wide with fear. Steve wasn't sure how to communicate with the guy, surely he didn't know english, so he took off the swastika armband off his arm and pointed between it and himself.

"Me no nazi" Steve explained, pointing at the armband again, then ripping the swastika in half and letting it fall on the ground. The man blinked. Steve pointed at Bucky, who Peggy was freeing.

"What happen?" Steve asked, and the man looked at him like he was stupid.

"I speak excellent english, thank you very much"

"What did they do to him???!!!"

"They tortured him, i'm not sure about their aim."

"Who are you? German?"

" _Swiss_."

"Why are you there?"

"Long story, we have to go **now**. The surveillance cameras already caught us!"

Steve looked up, straight towards the camera, which turned along with his motion.

_Well, fuck..._


End file.
